Re: [gentoo-user] ATI-Driver 9.6 support?

[Volker Armin Hemmann]

On Freitag 03 Juli 2009, Jesús Guerrero wrote:
> On Fri, July 3, 2009 20:30, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
> > Well, AMD uses a fixed cycle - one release a month. They also have a
> > fixed development cycle that takes roughly 3 month (all explained on
> > phoronix a long time ago). So supporting the latest kernels is not easy
> > or even possible.
>
> Very well for them, I don't know how that is relevant, since 2.6.29 was
> released 23-Mar-2009 23:30. So, by now, both the 1 month and the 3 month
> cycles have passed. Still no support. Or maybe my maths are not correct.

no, and that is why a lot of people were pissed off that .29 wasn't supported 
either.

>
> > They also only support a few distros. If you insist on using a
> > non-supported kernel, you are on your own.
>
> Crap. All the distros use the same kernel. If it compiles against a vanilla
> kernel , it will compile against a vanilla kernel on *every* distro under
> the sun.

incorrect.

> > That said - Nvidia might be 'better' when it comes to binary drivers, but
> > they suck when it comes to open source drivers.
>
> Agreed. But at least, you have *one* driver that works. With my hd2600,
> fglrx sucks big time, and neither radeon nor radeonhd works (unless I
> disable dri, and then vesa performs better).

*shrug* my hd3870 works well enough.

>
> If I have to choose between one closed driver that works perfectly and
> one close driver that works bad+2 open ones that simply don't work, I
> choose the closed driver that works.

go to nvnews - and you'll see that there are more than enough people where the 
driver does not work. So with amd you have 3 drivers to choose from - with 
nvidia 1.
And please - the open ones aren't that bad. When did you try them the last 
time?


>
> > AMD is working on free
> > drivers for all cards - that is something you have to recognize.
>
> As far as I know (I might be wrong) amd isn't working in anything. They
> just released the specifications and some technical sheets. The community
> is doing all the work.

very wrong.

>
> > Besides - if you use the ebuild, even 2.6.30 works. Yes, dmesg is spammed
> > with ugly messages. But who cares? Do you really monitor dmesg non stop?
>
> Who cares?!? mmmm, my /var partition gets filled with +1gb logs everyday,

hm - really? maybe you have stupid logging settings? because /var/log is 286M 
here - and I never remove any log ...


> the sys logger because while the files are open the space won't be freed.
> The driver does that, and the rest of my programs fail. But, who cares...
> The cpu usage is insane when using fglrx on .30, 60-100% on X when I play
> something in mplayer, so while watching a movie I can't do anything else,
> with the same fglrx version on linux 2.6.28 it takes around 10%.

root      3913  1.7  3.8 347992 195588 tty7    Ss+  Jul03  11:08 /usr/bin/X -
br -novtswitch -qu

1000     24706  5.4  0.3 174936 15288 pts/1    S+   03:15   0:00 mplayer 
/mnt/filme/YuGiOh! The


I suspect your system has other problems then the driver.

Like a bad setup.

>
> Who cares? I do. The driver just doesn't work, these are not minor
> annoyances, as you paint them, these are big problems. And the ebuild
> should be eliminated, and the old one depending on <2.6.29 should be
> restored.
>
> I really advice to stay in .28 if you are going to use fglrx.

and people who want to use an actual kernel punished just because YOU are too 
lazy to use package.mask?

I really advice you to rethink your position before you make anti-social 
demands.